This book is worth almost a 2.5, so I rounded it down.

Katie and Michaela Walker are sisters enrolled in a serious dance school in NYC when Katie learns that they are moving to a small town. While this book is written in the first person of Katie, it deals with how the girls adjust to a life totally different than what they have grown up with.

It is a completely forgettable story. ( )

***WARNING: This is not a book I particularly recommend, so this review contains spoilers. If you do want to read this book you are more than welcome to come back when you’ve finished and compare notes! Basically it’s all up to you, but you’ve been warned about spoilers in this review! Okay…. that’s enough rambling… On to the review.***

This book was a disappointment, but then again when I started reading it I wasn’t expecting something all that great. I think this is definitely a read for younger preteens. I feel like they would find it a lot more interesting and deeper than I did. If I read it when I bought it (which was a LONG time ago) maybe I would have liked it……. Welllllll…. actually probably not :|

The Year My Sister Got Lucky tells the story of two city girl sisters, Michaela and Katie, who move from New York City to a small town when their mom gets a new job. Katie has difficulty accepting the change and longs for her old life. On the other hand, Michaela fits in beautifully with the popular kids, gets a handsome quarterback boyfriend, and becomes Homecoming Queen. These changes in their lives cause a rift to form between the two sisters and that’s pretty much it.

This book had a promising start with the description of Katie and Michaela’s life in the city and how they were serious dancers studying ballet. I love New York so whenever I read about it I will usually get completely enraptured. I love to imagine what it would be like to live there and this book portrayed a really good picture of life in the city.

HOWEVER, once I really got to know the characters I realized something… I did not like either one of these girls! Katie was a naive and selfish 14 year-old, and 17 year-old Michaela came off as an ungrateful bitch. Sounds harsh, but it’s true! The first time this smacked me in the face was when this little exchange happened:

“‘Katie,’ she says. ‘You’re my other half. My sister. The closest person in the world to me.’

‘Same here,’ I say softening as I smile through my tears […]

‘And you’ll always be my sister,’ Michaela goes on. ‘But… you’re not my friend.'”

Ummmmm…. What?!? Why would you say something like that? Not only does she contradict herself with first saying that Katie her other half and that they’re so close, but she also contradicts what we have seen of her character so far. Sure, we are seeing things through Katie’s naive and biased eyes, but up until then we had NO reason to think that Michaela didn’t value their friendship as much as Katie did. Once they move Michaela completely shuns Katie and cuts her out of her life. Very mean indeed. Michaela also becomes unbelievably annoying. She calls people “babe” (gag) and becomes a stupid girl who will give it up to the first quarterback that comes swaggering on by. There is also an air of “poor little rich girl” surrounding Michaela, although their family is not wealthy. Sure, she is put under enormous amounts of pressure from her mother to become a professional ballerina, BUT she admitted that she loves dancing, she is privileged enough to be trained at a prestigious ballet school and she’s got a true shot at Juilliard. But the moment that dancing becomes “work” she wants to give up and go to a community college. OKAY.

Katie’s naivety also got on my nerves because it really didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on. First of all the shock that she had when seeing her sister interact with other people made me want to smack her in the face. *GASP* Your sister knows how to talk to guys?!? Really? Your sister is putting on jeans and makeup and hangs out with friends? What is so shocking about all of this? This aspect of Katie’s character goes hand in hand with her complete inability to talk to people and how rude she is.
Exhibit A: a cute boy named Sullivan talks to her and helps her up when she trips. What does Katie do? She doesn’t say anything and just WALKS AWAY.
Exhibit B: Soon-to-be-friend Autumn is the only nice person to her on her first day of school and asks her if she wants to walk to class together. She says no and WALKS AWAY. Needless to say it’s not hard to see why Katie isn’t adjusting to her new home.

Two other little notes:
1.The parents. I didn’t understand why Michaela felt she needed to keep EVERYTHING from her parents, namely the fact that she had a boyfriend. Yeah, her mom is controlling, but I never got the impression she’d be opposed to her daughters having a love life. As long as they weren’t distracted too much from dancing.
2. Of course when Katie and Michaela return to the city after 3 months Katie realizes the city isn’t as perfect as she remembered it was and somewhat longs for her quieter town and new friends. Please. You spent your entire life in New York with your friends and all it takes is 3 months in the country for you to decide that it’s actually horrible? Take it from a girl who’s moved A LOT. It doesn’t work that way.

The last thing I want to complain about in this book was the feeling that the strings were not completely tied tight enough for my taste. It’s not an open ending or anything like that, but all the little things that were running throughout the novel get solved in the most anti-climactic way possible. Here is a list of all these unsatisfying solutions.

Katie likes a boy named Jasper. It’s obvious he kind of likes her too. How does is end? “Maybe we could go skating sometime.” “Yeah, maybe” BYE. SEE YA LATER.
Cute possibility of a relationship between Katie’s neighbour, Emmaline and her gym teacher. Does anything come of it? NOPE.

PHEW. So after ALL of that you may be wondering why I didn’t just give this book one star and be done with it. The truth is there were a couple things I did like about this book. First, it was extremely readable and it didn’t take me long to finish it. Secondly I did enjoy the character of Emmaline. Emmaline is a young yoga instructor who has travelled a lot and becomes a sort of confidant for Katie. I wish her character was a little more developed and interacted with Katie a little more, but I did really like her. She was the most relatable character in the book for me, even though we don’t really find out all that much about her, and when we do get a little snippet of her history it’s in the last 10 pages…

Finally I already mentioned that I loved the parts of the book that were set in New York. Just the image of ballerinas studying and performing in New York City, living in an apartment in the East Village, ordering Chinese food, and hurrying to catch the subway appealed to my daydream of living as a young woman in the Big Apple. Loved it!

So to end this incredibly long review, I wouldn’t really recommend this book to anyone over the age of 13. Even so I wouldn’t really recommend this to anyone. If you do want to read it, there are some great reviews on Goodreads, but the only thing I can say is that it’s a quick read so thankfully it won’t take you long to get it over with. ( )

Beautiful novel, by Aimee Friedman (after reading Breaking Up, I read this, and was pleasently surprised) that I don't think I'll ever forget:

Characters:
Micheala and Katie were both great characters, but I couldn't really relate to Katie, I felt kind of trapped with her, if you know what I mean. I didn't feel that the pain she felt was because of Micheala's behavior towards her, I think that rather, she was a tinsy bit jealous of her sister. How she watched Micheala say goodbye to her boyfriend and kiss him from the window, it showed that her thoughts were a little mixed up- I mean- all the time she was trying very hard Not to fit in, which I didn't really understand. While her sister, only tried her best- and succeeded, instead of mourning about the move. I'm not trying to be mean or anything, I'm just saying that I didn't understand Katie that much,if she wanted to fit in she had to work for it, but nonetheless she was a very good character in this book. The closeness between the two sisters was shown very well, too.

Plot:
Great plot, I loved every bit of it and it moved forward with every page turn, which wasn't surprising- knowing that Aimee Friedman is the author :)) It was well developed and thought out, especially the beginning in the NY, but I was dissapointed she didn't keep it up till the end, after the move. I wanted to know more about the new place and I would have liked to have seen more description about it too. Otherwise, it was a very good plot!

Writing:
Again, a little more descriprion would've been nice. I would have loved to see more adjectives here, and a little more description of how the main characters looked would have been appriciated too :)Though, I know, Aimee's style is kind of like that, I don't want it to become a poor vocabulary. As I said before, in the plot, it would have been better if she had kept the writing from the beginning, at the rest of the book, too :)

I would recommend to Aimee Friedman fans :) ( )

Somehow, I'd gotten the wrong idea of what this book was going to be about.Once I was willing to let it be the book it is, rather than the one I was expecting, I enjoyed it, particularly the characters.I felt that Katie and her sister Michaela were both very real while I was reading the book. They each had their strengths and their challenges. Since the reader sees the events and interactions from Katie's point of view, it's easier to understand her attitudes, and do understand the path she takes in learning about herself and growing.I (as an adult) enjoyed reading this book, I think its target audience will as well.

Reviewed by Jennifer Rummel for TeensReadToo.com

Katie and her perfect sister, Michaela, have a brand new life in the country.

In their previous life, they've lived in New York City and danced ballet under the watchful eye of a legendary ballerina. But things have changed, and now Katie is lost on her own while her sister transforms into the queen bee of the social scene. Soon Michaela's dating the hottest guy in school and her best friends don't include Katie.

The two of them always shared secrets, but now Michaela barely talks to her about real life. Katie feels stung by her sister's betrayal.

Can sisters really be best friends?

Aimee Friedman dissects the sister relationship in her new book THE YEAR MY SISTER GOT LUCKY. The relationship between Katie and Michaela will captivate readers and the divergence from her usual characters will not be disappointing. ( )